The Researcher's Role

Teaching Social Research Methods with Participatory Theater and Role-Playing Techniques

Abstract

In a new world of nascent rules, restrictions, and lockdowns, a student’s biggest opportunity to connect with other similar individuals beyond their immediate circles is the digital classroom. Even with equipped tools of connection, students under COVID classrooms are ironically feeling the effects of disconnection and face risks for health concerns. As digital classrooms are shown to be prosaic, platformed, and productized, we will come to understand how building relationships with others but more so, of the self, is hugely hindered by faulty methods that do not work under new circumstances, and produce digitalized others which are consequential. It is as much an individual concern of a student’s performance as a statement on the public issue of current digital education. Sociological educators are essential in reshaping these pedagogical practices and beliefs, which can otherwise damage both students and their instructors. The educational and research program for students launched in 2019 as a participant laboratory for the master’s degree Course in Sociology and Social Research at the University of Calabria aims to teach sociological research methods through theatrical techniques and exercises as tools for social work (Gurvitch, 1956). The program consists of two complementary learning modules executed sequentially by two teachers with different professional backgrounds in order to develop in-depth research skills, both quantitative and qualitative, with an active approach to leading students into effective strategies of interaction for field study. Students come into contact not only with the subject-object of study, but also (and above all) with themselves, thus reducing some of their insecurities and discovering their own limits in terms of prejudices and stereotypes through the use of applied improvisation.  In this way, particular attention is paid to the role that the researcher must assume in specific research contexts, working deeply on himself to achieve spontaneity through role-training sessions (Moreno, 1923; 1953). In practical terms, exercises are used to stimulate sociological imagination and promote concentration: exercises of cooperation and collective strategies, techniques of active participation and construction of the group climate to gain access to the field, exercises for control and analysis, and verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal communication (i.e. how to present yourself in public through video recordings). For example, the Theatre of the Oppressed system (Boal, 1974) shows the relationship between news and newsworthiness and proceeds with their related deconstruction.  It also consists of many different ethnomethodological experiments and exercises about conversation analysis: elements of common sense, idioms, constructions, and stereotypes (present in speech). This kind of “Theatrical sociology approach” combines sociological, psychological, and pedagogical knowledge with theatrical games that become tools for the investigation of social phenomena in complex contexts. Beyond their diversity, science and art share the ability to discover and create (Nisbet, 1962), and this is what we strive to teach our students.